power

what can i do? what can i say?

| Sheree

Unconsciously I set myself the task of being creative everyday. A good way of marking this practice, was and still is, turning up here on this blog and posting something. Anything. A word, a quote, an image, an essay, an epiphany.

Some days, I’ve not had the time or energy or bandwidth to create anything, other days when I’ve felt this way, I’ve still turned up and done something. Anything. I’ve wanted to bring in some consistency within a world where consistency is irrelevant and pointless in the grand scheme of things. When the world is on fire, when Palestinians are dying of starvation and gunfire. When anti-immigration riots erupted once more in the UK. When tropical storms kill people in the Philippines. And when Syria returns to bloodshed. The list could go on of more countries and peoples around the world suffering at the hands of others, who do not see them as human or care about them.

I get sick of hearing the news. Watching the news. Seeing the headlines. I look away. I look away because I can and then chastise myself for dong so. There’s something in witnessing it all, even though it hurts my soul. What can I do? What can I say?

I get frustrated with all the hypocrisy I witness. The double standards. The lack of justice. People saying we’re doing this to them because we’ve been persecuted for so long so have a right, or are justified in persecuting other people now. I’m a white man and I rape women and children, but I’m protesting about (illegal) immigrants coming over here and raping our women and children. Everything is operating within this world to keep a few in power and wealth at the expense of other people deemed inferior and dispensable.

I hate hate. I can’t stand it. I see it in the screwed up faces of people hauling abuse at vulnerable people. It’s been there within the marrow of their bones for centuries. Grown white adults, hurling abuse at little black children. Not seeing them as children but as beasts, beasts to destroy. It breaks my heart and disgusts me, but what can I say? What can I do?

I can stop myself from feeing powerless. I can stop my handwringing, and getting frustrated with myself and use this energy otherwise. I can make art to bring about change. No matter how small that change, starting from myself and vibrating out.

I can create stories of an imagined alternative, better, other world. I can create zines which challenge and refuse what has already been refused of us. I can blog about my own experiences in order to connect with others. I can paint/ print posters to raise awareness and change the messages of hate to love and hope. I can create community and create change together, one stitch, one word, one voice at a time. I can create poetry to create conversation. I can self-care so I can in turn community-care. I can donate time, money, resources to a cause I believe in and that is bringing about a better society. I can lean more into mutual aid to divest from racial capitalism.

I can keep showing up here, craving out a safe and brave space on the internet that is liberatory worldmaking, on my own terms.

continuing to live and learn

| Sheree
Studio Practice Journal, 2023-4

“On the afternoon of May 16, 2020, about a week before George Floyd was killed by the police, twenty-one-year-old Tye Anders was accused by the Midland, Texas, police of running a stop sign. He pulled over in front of his ninety-year-old grandmother’s house.”

Excerpt From
We Refuse
Kellie Carter Jackson

There’s Anders pleading for his life. There’s many policemen with guns drawn pointed at him and there’s bystanders filming it all. One woman who’s filming this is also pleading for the police to not shot Anders saying he’s scared. Hasn’t there been enough killing of unarmed black people, killed just because of the colour of their skin?

Still no guns are lowered and Anders is on the ground clearly empty handed but the situation is just escalating as the police continue to train their guns on his body.

Anders’ ninety-years-old grandmother steps out of her house praying. With cane in hand she walks towards her grandson even though guns are trained in her direction.

There was still panic still bystanders screaming for the police to put their guns up. Some do but still one cop is walking towards Anders with his gun raised. Trying to move and push her out of the way, his grandmother doesn’t believe that her grandson won’t still be shot so she falls onto her grandson, protecting his body with her own body. Not longer after this with the police and crowd pushing and pulsating around her , she loses consciousness.

Anders is arrested for fleeing the police. His grandmother is taken to hospital.

Reading this story this morning made me cry. Not because of the police brutality or the disregard for human life, black life. But because of what the grandmother in the story did. She’s ninety-years-old, frail and only has her prays and body, but used both in protection, in an act of love.

“Her collapse was not a coincidence. Protection is powerful, beautiful, and sacrificial because protection is love. But she should not have needed to put her body between the police and her grandson to protect him.”

Excerpt From
We Refuse
Kellie Carter Jackson.

Protection. She should not have needed to, but she did put her body between the police and grandson to protect him. This act of courage broke my heart this morning. Had me weeping. Maybe it was the last straw that pushed me over the edge into the breakdown. Maybe it was my imagination seeing this playing out.

Maybe I’m just sick and tired of living in a world where white violence is justified and black violence is really self-defence but is never judged that way.

I’ve always been a supporter of care work but even more so now. As care work, along with rest are forms of protection. Through the way I {BE} with myself and others, and the work that I do for self and others, I’m tending daily to the mental, emotional, and physical needs and health of black people, so we are better equipped to survive and thrive within a hostile, brutal, grinning world.

Black People’s Day of Action, 2 march 1981

| Sheree
Graham Turner, in Resistance, Steve McQueen

“13 Dead, Nothing Said”, the rallying cry rings out.

walking with dignity, arm in arm, a protest, not a riot nor a mob.

a powerful display of unity and resistance. “13 Dead, Nothing Said”,

in the face of adversity. of racism, police conduct, and social justice,

the New Cross Massacre Action Committee respond.

treating black victims as criminals themselves, “13 Dead, Nothing Said”.

on 18 January 1981, Yvonne Ruddock celebrated her 16th birthday with friends,

when a fire tore through 439 New Cross Road in south-east London.

“13 Dead, Nothing Said”.

community solidarity, in the midst of racial tensions and police mishandling,

they marched, 20.000 strong, from the scene of the fire

to the Houses of Parliament to present a petition. “13 Dead, Nothing Said”.

the loss of young black lives barely noted by the media,

no words of condolence from maggie, and to this day, no one

has ever been charged with starting the fire. “13 Dead, Nothing Said”.

A Summer of Reading – a refusal of productivity

| Sheree

With the warmer weather and the slower pace, I’m so ready to lean into the lazy, easy, light and breezy days of summer.

My six weeks off the clock summer holidays are just around the corner. I can taste the sweet sweet honey of rest. But I’m not quite there yet. Still things to complete, anniversaries to celebrate and forms to send off.

But it’s close. I can smell the cut grass and strawberries and syrup already. The long drawn out of days of doing fuck all. Hell to the yes!

Reading is top of the agenda. Summer self-study of topics and issues that are making me buzz. I’ve already started my crime fiction reading as I get back into the DCI Ryan Mysteries Series from L J Ross, all set in the north east.

And now tonight, with an hour to spare before pick up I dive into We Refuse by Kellie Carter Jackson. This is just what I need coming off the back of completing my black mothering and fugitivity chapter. But it also is adding fuel to my fire of refusal and divesting from racial capitalism.

I’m only a few pages in and my heart is singing and I’m thumping with energy in the recognition of finding my space, my safe place where my desires and wants for freedom on my own terms is not weird or unachievable. But is very much necessary.

#onwards

who has #womensrights?

| Sheree
Neil Kenlock, 1970, Resistence Exhibition, Steve McQueen, 2025

In March the United Nations issued a report about Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinian women since October 2023.

Those who shout long and hard about #womensrights have said fuck all about this abuse.

Perpetuating a system of oppression through gender-based violence and undermining self-determination is not coincidental.

But those who profess to be standing up for #womensrights say nothing.

Sexual and gender-based violence perpetuated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a strategy of war by Israel to demoralise and destroy Palestinians.

Those who shout long and hard about #womensrights have said fuck all about this abuse.

Israeli forces have destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza. Medical support and equipment for safe pregnancies, postnatal care and neonatal care are decimated.

But those who profess to be standing up for #womensrights say nothing.

Women’s and girl’s reproductive right and autonomy as well as their right to life, health and dignity have been erased.

And yet these people, mostly white women, such as JK Rowling, who harp on about #womensrights and the so called threats posed by transgender people, say nothing about the Palestinian women and girls who are subjected to violence right now.

The deliberate starvation by Israel of Palestinian people has a devastating effect on pregnant women resulting in anaemia, malnutrition, miscarriages, stillbirths and undernourished newborns as lactating women cannot produce enough milk.

And yet these people here for #womensrights say nothing.

It would seem that those who claim to be champions of #womenrights pick and choose who has rights as women, fuck it, as human beings.

Witnessing the Killing Fields

| Sheree
Bob Vylan

The political and media furore over chants at Glastonbury by Bob Vylan, a British punk duo has me reeling at the moment. I couldn’t get my head around it at first, why I was feeling such anger at this condemnation of their chant? At first I was thinking it was because this group are black and I felt it was racism again raising its ugly head. But then Kneecap is getting condemnation as well for ‘hate speech’, ‘inciting violence’, an Irish hip-hop trio from Belfast. I’m not saying that the Irish has not experienced their own form of racism, prejudice and discrimination either.

But then when I saw the newspaper headlines, and then the Prime Minister coming out say it was ”appalling hate speech’ wanting an investigation in the BBC and how they could allow this to happen, with criminal investigations being filed against both Bob Vylan and Kneecap, I realised why I was getting angry and really enraged. It was because there was all this disgust and moral hand whinging and condemnation of a chant, but not the same level of condemnation and rage and move to stop it for the genocide happening in Gaza, right now, or for the last 1 year, 8 months, 3 weeks and 4 days. As the Palestinians continue to be exterminated by Israel Defense Forces (IDF), there is no condemnation, not opposition from the UK government, the media, those in business, those who are showing again and again that they are controlled, owned by the Israeli Government and State. Proving that they actually have vested interests in Israel and continuing the genocide.

It is ludicrous to witness, the political and media condemnation of a few words chanted at a music festival while Palestinians waiting in a line for aid, starving people who’ve been herded into this state of the queuing dead, are massacred by IDF. These people dead on their feet, seeking aid, did not pose a threat, and yet the IDF, an armed force just opened fire on them because they could. Because they know, no one is trying to stop them. No one is condemning their actions. The world is turning a blind eye to their war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Anyone opposing their horrendous crimes are called anti-semitic and are cancelled, condemned, silenced.

Bob Vylan, facing a criminal investigation have also been dropped but their record company and are on a travel ban to USA. Swift and sharp punishment for expressing their desire to see a free Palestine, from the river to the sea. Mass disgust across the country and further afield about a chant, but where is the mass disgust and action against the mass extermination of a people? The Palestinians, the people of Gaza.

“It’s a Killing Field”, reported by Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg within Haaretz, details how IDF soldiers were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. Unarmed people are treated like a hostile force and just shot and killed. Deliberately. Bullets is the IDF form of communication. Not chants, bullets. Where is the condemnation of this? Where is the Parliamentary emergency meeting to discuss this deliberate killing of human life, that is genocide, that are war crimes? None but there is one about Bob Vylan, and Lisa Nandy, British Labour Party politician serving as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport since 2024, standing up in Parliament, in solemn tones criticising the BBC the Glastonbury broadcast and Bob Vylan for the chanting. Claiming her moment in the limelight, making a performance, Nandy condemned the “appalling and unacceptable scenes” at Glastonbury and said the government would not tolerate antisemitism. But the government tolerates genocide. FACT.

I could go on as I’m sick and tired of hearing when someone criticises IDF, and the Israeli state of murdering Palestinians and claiming Gaze, the whole state, from river to sea, that this is being anti-semitic. This is just another tactic used for shutting people up. As when people are criticising the genocide of Palestinians and the stealing of their homeland, they are not saying they hate Jews or the Jewish people. They are saying that the massacre of a people is wrong. The IDF as an armed force is committing genocide. That is what is being condemned, criticised and left to the general public around the world to fight against as the Western countries are doing nothing to stop it.

Conflating these criticisms with Jewish people , calling it anti-semitic is like using a get out of jail free card on repeat. It’s not the same thing. And I would argue that if the chant, ‘death, death to the IDF’, is anti-semitic and hate speech inciting violence, what/who is it killing IDF? A chant, some words at Glastonbury or the Israeli government sending the IDF into war, ordering them to kill unarmed people seeking aid? Tell me which one is a whitewashing of crimes against humanity? The chant is not a chant of hate for Jewish people. The chant is anger at the genocidal actions of a genocidal army, the IDF, who are beginning to ask themselves if this was is just, and what is the humanitarian price the Gazan population paying for this war?

Mid-year reflections

| Sheree
Bracket Fungi

Summer Solstice came and gone. I had plans to hit the sea at sunrise, but didn’t make it because I had a restless night what with the heat and house and car alarms going off during the night? Are they sensitive to the heat? I do not know. I thought I was trapped in some kind of twilight zone with the incessant calling alarms and no one moving to switch them off. But I digress. maybe I’m just sensitive to senseless noise!

Mid-year reflections. What can I say? I’m not getting anywhere fast and I’m okay with that.

I FaceTimed with a very dear friend many miles away today and she asked and what’s happening with me. What’s happening in Sheree World?

At first I felt I needed to fill in the gaps with some of this shit and that. Or I’ve been asked to do this shit and that? That I had to show I was hustling and beating the grind real good. But shit ain’t happening in Sheree World and in all honesty I’m happy about that.

I hibernated well into April this year what with going to Paris and celebrating my babies’ birthdays. By the time I came out of my cave, everyone was well into their year, well into 2025. And I could do one of two things ( probably other things too but focusing on just the two for now!).

I could drop everything my heart desired and focused on catching up with everyone else. Max out my diary with jobs and commitments and watch the money roll in.

Or two, I could, continue to roll out of my SheCave slowly and mindfully, carefully and with a whole heap of love and grace for myself and just take things on a day to day basis. No rush no sense of urgency and definitely no panicking.

Which option do you think I chose to follow?

I’m not even sure it was a viable choice because I’m so used to practicing Slow Fugitivity now that it’s the only way I can operate and keep myself sane, safe and thriving.

I’m not measuring my success by how much my bank balance is telling me or more like alerting me to. I’m not measuring my success by how many people are singing my praises. By how many people have my name on this lips and are ready and willing to work with me. Promote me, award me, accept me.

I’m measuring my success on how good I feel moment to moment. How much joy and love am I feeling now? How much care am I giving to my self and those around me? How much am I showing up into situations, gatherings and meetings as myself? Transparent, honest, earnest and hopeful?

How much am I being open hearted, loved, loveable and loving towards myself and those around me?

This is my measure of success.

I’m not turning away from all the shit and cruelty and destruction that is happening around me and in this world. I’m feeling it for the people who are getting caught in the middle of men with big egos who are playing at being leaders and pretending to protect their people. I know what is happening in the name of religion, or history or land and justice. I’m listening and seeing genocide after genocide happening and those responsible not being held to account. I see it and feel it and I want to do more to stop it, to fight against it. So trust me when I say, I do not turn away or ignore it when I choose joy and care and love as my weapons of choice. I’m not living in a fantasy land of all happy happy joy Joy. I’m not being naive or flippant.

I’m choosing to refuse the stories we are being told. I’m refusing to perpetuate the capitalist structures and feed into the patriarchy and imperialist tendencies. I’m choosing to refuse the roles assigned to me as a black woman as just another body to be used and abused and disposed of after I’m no longer useful.

Fuck that fuckery.

So mid-year reflection is that:

* I’ve got no regular working gig on the horizon.

* I’m searching for my tribe.

* I’m dreaming of other possibilities, another way of being.

* I’m refusing the shit sandwich that is offer me again and again.

* I’m refusing what has already been refused of me.

* I’m creating spaces for creative fugitivity.

* I’m creating gaps or breaks in the capitalist dome from which we can break free into the land of possibilities filled with imagination and play.

* I’m embracing craftivism. My word are my weapons. Always have been, always will be.

* I’m lingering in the midst of flight.

* I’m taking MY TIME to stretch OUT my tired limbs. Limbs reaching for the sky, eyes focused on the stars above as I’m breathing deeply, and allowing my deep belly laugh to roll out over the landscape as I pick a rhythm to my own beat and I’m shaking shake shake shaking OUT by big beautiful black behind.

Come join me if you dare. Make sure to bring a plate of food and story to tell as we gonna be gathering around the fire soon to build a free community, or as my dear friend Dal was saying just the other day, build a village. Yes thank you, indeedy!

Let’s get to shaking, shake shake, shaking this shit up!